Wearing a heavy pair of earmuffs while tending to some vacuuming, Tammy Price of Waterbury, Connecticut is less concerned with the cold of late winter than the flurries of obscenities and spine chilling shrieks of agony emanating from the second floor of her home.

After the commotion finally subsides, she gives an overweight, moustached twelve year-old boy $20 and a bag of ice for his knuckles, then heads upstairs to find her 10 year-old son Brandon hanging from a coat rack by his underwear.

Concerned that depriving their homeschooled children the sometimes brutal inculcation that public schoolyards provide will leave them too delicate to cope with the harsh realities of life, the Price’s are one of many homeschool families around the country who are contracting local bullies to come to their homes to physically and emotionally abuse their kids.

“There are a lot of real assholes walking this cruel planet, and you need to learn how to deal with it,” observed Brandon’s father Gary, “Which is why I think it’s good conditioning to have some creep come over to the house from time to time to give my boy the business and kick the crap out of him a bit."

Though his wife recognizes the real world value bullies have to offer, she laments the necessity of having to dole out tough love through a hulking, adolescent pituitary-case intermediary.

"Watching my son vomit from fear before one of his play-dates just about breaks my heart," she says, "I know it's for the best, but to see him walking around for days afterward completely stooped over and bow-legged from being slugged repeatedly in the stomach and having his pants pulled forcibly upwards between his tender tooshie cheeks, it makes me really sad that this is necessary."

Nonetheless, the Price's, like so many other homeschool parents, say they greatly prefer having their child beaten up and humiliated in the controlled environment of their own home.

"We always search the bullies we hire for weapons before letting them in the house, so at least Brandon won't get shot or stabbed like he'd be liable to at public school, and although the twenty dollars an hour we pay is just the tip of the iceburg after the bullies get through either stealing or destroying many of his most expensive toys, we know it'll all be worth it in the long run," Mr. Price remarked.